Low Water

The gentle South Platte carves eyes, no, almond-shaped
Sandbanks inside itself, juxtaposed with weedy islands

In the shape of odd legs. “The water looks alive,” he said.
She looked for the life he saw. It was there, crawling light.

A nod. Mosquitos not a problem yet, the two could dream
Of spending long days here, sitting side by side with quiet minds.

Content. Perhaps a little bored or spent. Noticing the echoed bloom
Of clouds above the distant cottonwoods. Dissecting dried weeds.

Perhaps both remembering the stolen day they waded
Face to face in this same place four years ago, shirts pulled up

Just enough so winter’s white bellies could mend and touch
While water traced the almond shapes of ankles.

No one watched from the high bank that day.
Even herons overlooked the danger of that kiss.

Today there is no kissing or risk, just the simple shapes
Slow water makes of sand and love and flat bliss.

2012

Cat as Metaphor for Hass’s Non-Metaphors

The rain’s cadence reminds me
of my cat’s clicking while she hunts
moths in windows. As I pause
to think if the sound is the same
truly the same, she approaches
the top of my pen with itchy cheeks
glides her face against the cap
motoring her inner kitty mystery
which also sounds like rain.
And I think of Hass who isn’t one
to mess much with metaphor
but offers up the whiskers of the world
just as they are, delivered by the body
memory, words. How much I want
to make the world a metaphor.
How much the world resists
and clicks such making.

2012

Desire builds a house

of me for you to live in.
Doors are everywhere.

The walls are roaring
flames sucking stale air.

You can’t enter.
I burn myself out.

You’d never know
a house was ever there.

2012

Constellate

One night propelled me
beyond what is small

and impossible
in the human heart.

Laughing, unmappable,
our eyes, mouths, hands,

and scars flashed,
made of new stars.

Then I fell.

From a distance
of too many years

and through a swelling
atmosphere, I will watch

with joy for the giant
shape you learn to make

of your life
from here.

2012

Rippling through the alley, a

low flying kite? No:
fast black bird, small beak streaming
a long white banner.

29 April 2012

Bright Moth, How Large the World is this Morning

Imprisoned in surprising
rectangular spaces all night,
a slick vertical clinging,
you did the only thing
you knew to do. Wait in the thin
space behind a dark painting.

In the morning,
French doors were
bleared light. They opened
mysteriously, as did
a memory inside you.

The memory drunkenly
curved toward more light.
You drew a flickery line
through an open window.

How quickly one
is liberated matching
light to light.

2012

Exodus

My left eye wanders
from what my right eye dreams.
In the mirror, it is a wave
parting in the middle of my face,

my own red sea. Two peoples,
one fleeing, one in chase, both
ignorant, unseeing, make
a pilgrimage from my head

into the cleft of my cathedral
chest where everyone fingers brown
bodhi seeds. When the waters mend
their seam, no one drowns.

2012

The first poet laureate

ripped off limbs of the woman tree
wrapped them into a woman ring
left her maid in a wooden breeze
and crowned himself the poet’s king.

2012

with thanks to David Mason for telling the story

in Lush

Two of my poems, "Reverie in Green" and "If we forget there is work to be done", are now featured in a new book by Rufous Press: Lush.

I'm particularly happy that a few poems by my friend and fellow Coloradoan, Cameron Scott, also live in these pages. Check him out.

“A diverse collection of contemporary poetry and prose from around the globe, Lush is a compact volume of emotive, fluid, and genuine modern day verse. This joyful selection of warm weather meanderings will speak to even the most casual consumer of poetic wordplay.” -A.g. Synclair, Editor & Publisher of The Montucky Review

“Lush is an exquisite collection, brimming with the palatial richness of summer’s luster. Like watching August light reveal the veins in shady leaves, the pieces in Lush remind us that this season of warmth is also meta-palace of memory where the scent of clover can unveil a forgotten moment or shadows on water can stir a desire long hidden within. Once again, Rufous Press has produced a thoughtful and exciting compilation of new voices.” -Megan Duffy, Editor of The Meadowland Review

“The poetry and prose in Lush span an arc of joy--rough and delicate, lasting and immediate.” -Kathleen Maher

Friendship

Before friendship can save you,
you must crash your rattling, shit-caked
semi-truck pride, release every tender eyed cow
the ones you were driving to slaughter for a low price
let them wander into the tall meadow
of flowering nettles and mullein
she left growing for you.

Before you find friendship’s nourishing weeds
you must first stand alone by a huge green garbage can
whose ashtray is full of discarded butts, and smoke one, remembering
embers passed to you, broke, or trying to quit, unable to resist
putting your lips where your friends’ lips were, taking in
smoke to make breath more memorable. You must
remember breath shared is like smoke.

Before friendship can spread your deepest sigh
you must let her hammer dynamite into your granite
heart, listen well to her story of lost breasts, lost mothers, lost sisters
found names, until her fire sends the fuse aflame, until your heart
explodes into giant boulders and tiny irretrievable shards.
You must let her glue you back together in her arms
into the shape of a hand reaching out of earth.

It is only then that friendship
hooks your hand around its hip, friendship
that is staked in a square around you, small sapling
that you are, held by sturdy ropes on a windswept plain
friendship that holds you tiny while your trunk
gains girth, prunes your bony winter twigs
to train you for a lifetime of springs.

2012